


milestones

by tobito-dorito (jelly_tyson)



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: F/F, I'm sorry for this mess, Light Angst, heteronormativity runs rampant in tobin's mind despite it all, internal struggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 11:09:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20965559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jelly_tyson/pseuds/tobito-dorito
Summary: Tobin struggles with internalized heteronormativity and the moments she missed.





	milestones

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry about this mess. I promise there’s a happy (ish) ending.

The wind is cool on her face as they walk along the beach. It’s a quiet night, a storm is brewing on the horizon, but Tobin thinks they’ve still got a few hours before it’ll be a problem.

They walk silently along the beach, listening to the rhythmic crashing of waves on the rocks, as they come upon a beachfront wedding reception. It’s small and intimate, no more than 20 people, and the bride and groom sway softly on a makeshift dance floor to an unrecognizable melody.

Tobin reaches for her then. Grasps her hand and holds it tight as they try not to pry into the moment. It’s accidental and intentional at the same time – a Pavlovian response to the sights and sounds of a wedding, of love, of happiness and togetherness.

Christen barely reacts, somehow already expecting the action. Instead, she watches as Tobin’s features soften in the dim moonlight, watches her clench her jaw then smile tentatively as the couple twirls, watches the corners of her smile twitch farther upwards as the bride’s father taps the groom on the shoulder before cutting in. She watches Tobin’s shrug and kick the sand at her feet, and squeezes her palm then.

Tobin sighs and keeps walking, looking to the sea. “Did you ever dream about your wedding?” she asks quietly. “Like, in school?”

“When I was a little girl, yeah,” Christen responds.

It’s not their first time talking about marriage, but it’s among the first talks of a wedding.

“What was it like?”

Christen sighs and purses her lips, thinks about it for a moment. Tobin’s still looking straight ahead, unsure of what she wants to hear.

“I think it was pretty typical. White dress, not too poufy, hair professionally styled. A big wedding cake.”

“Church or beach?” Tobin asks, her tone neutral.

“Depended on which friend was asking.” Christen remembers how she told Amanda it would be in a church and how she and Rosa both wanted a beach wedding.

Tobin hums, still looking forward.

Christen wants to ask why, wants to know where this is coming from, wants to know why Tobin suddenly sounds and looks so somber.

The music of the wedding fades and it’s just the two of them again.

“I didn’t,” she finally says.

Christen looks over at her then, sees the shame in her profile as they walk along the shore.

Tobin’s thought about it a lot recently, given how many of her friends have been getting married. She’s been to countless weddings this year – some in churches, some in cabins, some in open fields, and some along the shores. Some have been religious, some unconventional, some very hipster, and some very boring. She’s only brought a date to a few of them, only to those that really know her, but still attends all that she’s invited to. She can’t pass up a celebration of love.

Eventually people stopped asking about her wedding. Tobin Heath? The great nomad, settling down? Building a home and a life separate from football? Impossible.

The truth is, she never imagined she’d find someone to love her.

She’s not sure when it dawned on her that she also never thought about her wedding growing up, but she blames an off-hand conversation with Meghan in a dim bar after too much whiskey.

_“Girls who like girls don’t get the same milestones as other girls.”_

It hit her harder than any other line she’s ever heard.

She remembers leaving the bar in a daze and stopping her car on the side of the road – tears clouding her vision too much to drive. She had screamed into the heavens, to whomever would listen, wet sobs wracking her body as she pounded on the steering wheel and mourned for the years she lost to not realizing who she is.

It bothers her that there’s no manual. It kills her that every day you discover something new. That the moment you realize that there’s a name for what you’ve been feeling your whole life is the moment you go through puberty all over again.

That suddenly everything makes sense, but nothing makes any sense.

That one day you wake up and suddenly there’s an explanation to why you never thought about a boy asking you to a dance. That there was a reason you went through all of middle school without so much as a crush. That the strange infatuation you had with the senior forward when you were fourteen was actually a _crush_.

But realizing who you are comes at a cost.

It comes with accepting that you’re not normal. That you’ve never been. That no matter how much you want to feel normal, you’ll still never have the same milestones as everyone else got in their teens. That you’ll never have had a first-kiss-under-the-bleachers story, that you’ll never be asked to prom by the person you wanted to go with.

That your story never truly began until your twenties.

Other girls got to dream about movie dates and growing up to have babies with freckles or curly hair or blue eyes. Other girls get to kiss boys on dares in elementary school, but your realization comes as a drunken college “experiment” with a tri-delt blonde who didn’t wake up with the same feelings you did.

It comes at such a cost when you’re old enough to truly realize how much you didn’t have.

You never dream about your wedding because you never see who’s meant to be standing in front of you that day.

After realizing that this is who you are, it gets even harder to imagine a wedding. Somehow, despite finally coming to terms with your whole self, it’s even harder to see that happiness.

The news can’t stop talking about how marriage is between a man and a woman. How your love is against the law, and punishable by law. You may never be able to face the church again, despite knowing God’s love, much less get married inside one. How you won’t be able to invite your childhood best friends because they “don’t condone your lifestyle”.

How your father may never give you away because after you tell him, he may never speak to you again.

So you never dream. You never allow yourself to picture the “happiest day of your life” because you’re still trying to piece together whether you deserve happiness. Whether God will still love you. Whether your family will. Whether you’re allowed to have milestones. Whether you’re allowed to love and be loved.

Tobin isn’t one to dwell, but this one cuts her deep. This one is buried in the depths of her core and rears its angry head every few months.

She loves so strongly. She fights for love, she celebrates it, she lives by it and she lives for it.

The only one she knows who loves more strongly than she does is the woman she loves.

But all the while she has never allowed herself to dream about the most common celebration of love. Yeah, this one hurts.

The shame plays out on her face because even now, even after years of knowing she sees a life with Christen, Tobin cannot wrap her head around a wedding. She can’t imagine the church or the beach or the first dance or crying during her vows. She can’t imagine her mom’s face in the front row or her nephew as the ring bearer. She can’t see any of it – can only see past it, fast-forwarding to the ring around her finger and the shared mortgage and introducing her “wife, Christen Press”.

The water is cold on her toes and she’s grateful that Christen hasn’t said anything. She started this whole conversation, but now can’t bring herself to finish it. She feels the tears pricking behind her eyes, knows that if she opens her mouth the lump in her throat will give her away.

“I see us on a beach,” Christen whispers. “Just you and me.”

Tobin looks at her then, eyes hooded and guarded, but Christen stares straight ahead.

“I want you to feel the sand between your toes when I promise to be yours forever.”

It’s barely a whisper, but the words echo in her ears. In her chest. Tobin stills, rooted in the sand, her hand still holding Christen’s tightly.

Christen stops as she feels the tug and turns to see a teary-eyed Tobin staring straight into her. She’s shy and brave and knows that this is Tobin’s moment, that this is something Tobin needs to hear and there’s not much else she can do now but be there and hope she sees the truth for herself.

Tobin’s head is spinning. She wants to believe her, wants to believe that it’s even in the realm of possibilities for her, but the pain and guilt still burn beneath her ribs like an icy fire. She battles with herself. She sees pieces of her past self instinctively rebelling against the notion of happiness, and sees her future self making this same walk alongside a four-year-old with copper skin and windblown curls.

Christen’s words are barely enough to get her out of her head, and Tobin’s tears give her away.

She blinks them away unsuccessfully as she turns towards Christen, backlit by moonlight, the waves crashing at her feet, still holding her hand and looking at her like she’s made of diamonds and sunlight.

God, she’s so in love.

All those self-help books that say you can’t fall in love until you love yourself are wrong.

The best kind of love means you finally can love yourself. Because someone loves all of you.

She’s not there yet, not entirely, but the emptiness is healing. The weight is lifting. The spaces she protected from the world, from herself, slowly being filled by the woman she never wants to be without.

“Just you and me?” She asks, her voice shaky.

Christen steps back to her, brushing her thumb over the dried tear tracks on Tobin’s cheeks and pushing the hair behind her ear.

“Forever.”

It’s not enough, but it’s everything.

**Author's Note:**

> This is actually inspired by another fic that I couldn’t stop thinking about, so I had to get the thoughts down somehow. Don’t tell my therapist I wrote this instead of processing my own insecurities.


End file.
